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April 5, 1951 | Judge Sentences Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to Death for Espionage

By The Learning Network April 5, 2012 4:03 amApril 5, 2012 4:03 am

Roger Higgins/Library of Congress New York World-Telegram and the Sun CollectionJulius and Ethel Rosenberg leaving court after being convicted of espionage in March 1951. They were sentenced to death a week later.

Historic Headlines

On April 5, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union. They were executed by electric chair in 1953, becoming the only two American civilians to
be executed for cold war espionage.

The Rosenbergs were a husband and wife accused of heading a spy ring during World War II that provided the Soviet Union with information about the United States’ development of the atomic bomb. This information
may have played a small role in the Soviet Union’s development of an atomic bomb in 1949. The U.S. government was aware that nuclear secrets had been smuggled to the Soviet Union. Its decoding of Soviet cables, known as the Venona intercepts, led the government to Klaus
Fuchs, a German-born scientist who had taken part in the Manhattan Project. Mr. Fuchs, after being arrested by the British authorities in February 1950, confessed to handing over information to a spy later identified
as the Philadelphia chemist Harry Gold. Mr. Gold told authorities that he had also received secrets from a soldier based in Los Alamos, in New Mexico, the center of the Manhattan Project. That soldier, David Greenglass,
implicated his wife Ruth and his sister Ethel’s husband, Julius Rosenberg, who was arrested in July 1950.

Unlike others in the case, Mr. Rosenberg refused to confess his guilt or offer any information to authorities. There was little evidence to suggest that Ms. Rosenberg was involved in the spy ring, but authorities arrested
her to put pressure on Mr. Rosenberg. The Greenglasses, to protect themselves, later implicated Ms. Rosenberg, who was charged with Mr. Rosenberg under the Espionage Act of 1917, which prohibited aiding U.S. enemies
during wartime.

The Rosenbergs stood trial with Morton Sobell, a fellow spy, beginning March 6, 1951. The prosecution’s key witnesses were the Greenglasses and Mr. Gold. The defense called only the Rosenbergs, who denied all
involvement in Soviet espionage and frequently invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about their allegiances to the Communist Party. The jury convicted all three defendants on March 29.

The New York Times wrote, “The jury … made no recommendation for mercy. Judge Kaufman showed none. He described the defendant’s crime
as ‘worse than murder’ and ‘a sordid, dirty business’ not to be compared with Nathan Hale’s sacrifice of his life for his country.”

The question of the Rosenbergs’ guilt has long been debated. Defenders of the Rosenbergs believed that they were victims of the rabid anti-Communist hysteria of the McCarthy era and that they were convicted largely
on the self-serving testimony of others implicated for espionage.

In the last 20 years, evidence came to light that confirmed Mr. Rosenberg was a spy, but that Ms. Rosenberg played little or no role in the crimes.

In 1995, the U.S. government released the Venona intercepts, which made clear that Mr. Rosenberg took part in the recruitment of Mr. Greenglass. Two years later, the former Soviet agent Alexsandr Feklisov revealed that
he had been Mr. Rosenberg’s contact and that he had received top-secret electronic information, though little of it was helpful in developing an atomic bomb (however, it did aid the Soviets in developing
the technology to shoot down a
U-2 spy plane in 1960).

In 2001, Mr. Greenglass admitted that he had lied about his sister Ethel’s typing notes about atomic bombs. In 2008, Mr. Sobell, who had long maintained that he and the Rosenbergs were innocent, admitted that he and Mr. Rosenberg had indeed been spies. In an interview with The Times he said of Ms. Rosenberg, “She knew what he was doing, but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.”

The Rosenberg case remains a disputed episode in the cold war era. A
2003 Times editorial observed, “It now seems clear the Rosenbergs were neither as innocent as they claimed nor as guilty as the government alleged. …The Rosenberg case still haunts American history,
reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria.”

Connect to Today:

In December 2010, in the midst of talk that the Department of Justice would charge Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, under the Espionage Act of 1917, Robert Meeropol, the son of the Rosenbergs, gave an interview on the radio program Democracy Now! Mr. Meeropol called the act — the same one under which his parents were executed — unconstitutional.

He argued that the “Espionage Act of 1917 was passed, basically to criminalize dissent” and an “attempt to do an end run around the constitutional definition of ‘treason.’”
He continued, “A functioning democracy needs a free flow of information. But what we have in post-9/11 America is a vast expansion of the secrecy complex. So, vast amounts of material can be declared secret.
And then, if you reveal those secrets, you could be sent to jail. And, of course, this — well, this undermines the basis for democracy.”

Do you agree with Mr. Meeropol’s assertion that the act is unconstitutional? In your opinion, do Mr. Assange’s acts qualify as espionage? Is it dangerous to democracy to punish people like Mr. Assange
for revealing government secrets? Why or why not?

Mr Meeropol is quite right. The resurrection of the Espionage Act after 9/11 chillingly recalls that very dark period of American history,the McCarthy era. By playing on people’s emotions the US government
is abusing the law and seeking to quash the honorable act of whistle-blowing. The WikiLeaks releases exposed war crimes that our country should admit to as a violation of so much of what we value. To indict
Mr Assange for bringing this out in the open would be hypocritical.

The comment of Robert Meeropol reawakened the memory of the documentary of the Rosenberg trial I saw so long ago. A brother testifying against his sister to clear his own name was as horrific then as it is now.
How a system of lawyers , judges and news media were unable to mitigate the sentence, especially regarding Mrs. Rosenberg is appalling. The U.S. is strong enough and should value its democratic principles upon
which every child is brought up to honor and respect, to allow for transparency , without stooping to the Espionage Act.

When it comes to the security of an entire nation, some lives may lose value if thought to be against said nation. Mr. Meeropol’s statement of Mr. Rosenberg’s parents to death to be unconditional as
partially true. Even thou his father was convicted and executed properly for espionage, his wife had not been proven of committing such actions. When Robert Hanssen was arrested in 2001 for espionage, his wife
was not convicted for conviction of for purposes revolving around pressure and fear. Mr. Assange’s is releasing classified information, but he is not releasing to a specific country. This could be considered
espionage, I am uncertain whether it is or not. It is not dangerous against democracy for arresting individuals proven to have committed espionage.